Thursday, May 19, 2005

Down on the Farm: Advanced-A Lake Elsinore

Brief statistical analysis of Advanced-A Lake Elsinore's pitching (complete with HR/9, though virtually no commentary on that stat, as I'm not sure what's good... Peter?):

Lake Elsinore Pitching

Name

IP

K

BB

HR

K/9

BB/9

K/BB

HR/9

Jared Wells

44.3

33

7

4

6.70

1.42

4.71

0.81

Chris Tierney

41.7

20

23

1

4.32

4.96

0.87

0.22

Arturo Lopez

38.7

30

17

3

6.98

4.95

1.76

0.70

Javier Martinez

36.7

30

11

9

7.36

2.70

2.73

2.21

Eddie Bonine

26.3

21

10

3

7.19

3.42

2.10

1.03

Dirk Hayhurst

23

18

7

2

7.04

2.74

2.57

0.78

Paul Abraham

22.0

22

4

0

9.00

1.64

5.50

0.00

Howard Pence

21.0

10

12

1

4.29

5.14

0.83

0.43

Wilmer Villatoro

20.7

23

9

1

10.00

3.91

2.56

0.43

Leonel Rosales

16.7

22

5

1

11.86

2.69

4.40

0.54

Clark Girardeau

10.3

6

2

0

5.24

1.75

3.00

0.00

Ryan Trytten

5.0

6

6

0

10.80

10.80

1.00

0.00

The players who jump out at you immediately are Paul Abraham and Leonel Rosales. Both have outstanding K rates, BB rates and K:BB ratios. Unfortunately 22.0 & 16.7 IP are very small sample sizes (even smaller than 44.3!). Perhaps more unfortunate is that the players are ages 25 & 23, yet they're playing Advanced-A ball.

Jared Wells, who has pitched the most innings, also has a fantastic strikeout to walk ratio at 4.71. However, Wells is doing it with a mediocre K/9 and an absolutely sick 1.42 BB/9 rate. It's impressive, but you'd really like to see the Ks.

Martinez, 28, Bonine, 23, Hayhurst, 24, Villatoro, 23, and Girardeau, 23, also managed twice as many strikeouts as walks. However, none were particularly spectacular and one would hope for better numbers from players of their ages playing High-A.

Arturo Lopez and Chris Tierney, the two youngest pitchers at 22 & 21 put up some of the most disappointing numbers of the bunch while logging more innings than all but Jared Wells.

What really bothers me is that a 28 year old who can't strike out so much as one batter per inning, or limit the opposition to 2 home runs per 9 innings pitched is fourth on the team in innings pitched. I'm not sure if there's a legitimate reason for this, but to be honest I can't think of a possible one.

5 Comments:

Martinez is in A-ball, because he had surgery to repair something in his shoulder. If I remember correctly, he did make it all the way to AAA a few years ago (2002? 3?). He still has some ability, so the Padres don't want to give up on him. And he striking 'enough' to be effective, but he does need to improve. His window is closing.

You've touched on one problem with the Padres' system. It's relatively old. Yikes.